Oracle Licensing: Part 1 License Metric

Information about Oracle licensing is not abundantly available. Most of us might not be familiar with Oracle licensing. This article provides information about Oracle Licensing Rules and Definitions. This is Part 1 – License Metric (Oracle Technology). Please look at the disclaimer and agree before reading.

You can choose between a license based on a ‘User’ or based on server-specifications which is ’Processor’. A user-based license is called Named User Plus. So, two common license metrics are Named User Plus and Processor. I will explain a little more about the definitions.

Named User Plus
When licensing on the basis of Named User Plus you have to count people that are able to use the software at any time. Don’t count pc’s, count people. Don’t count concurrent, count people. Don’t count connections to a database, count people at the frontend.

Processor
A Processor license is a processor unit in the server. Oracle used to have a license based on processor speed but not anymore. You have to count processors. You have to make a distinction here between Oracle product that have ‘Standard (One)’ in the product name or not (i.e. Enterprise). When you want to license a ‘Standard’ product with a Processor license, a processor is counted as an ‘occupied socket’ (socket= is a cpu slot). In conclusion. When you want to buy a Processor license(s) for a product you check the product name: does it carry ‘Standard (One)’ in it’s product name count occupied socket. The occupied (in use) sockets are the number of Processor license you have to buy. Does the product name carry ‘Enterprise’ you must count processors which are the required Processor licenses you have to buy. Additionally, the Processor license for Enterprise Edition products requires that you take into account the number of cores. This topic of multi-core processor licensing we will later.

In conclusion, when licensing Oracle, first thing you can do is choose a license metric. Processor license is used for internet applications where the number of users cannot be counted, but you can use a Processor license as well for any internal use. Just look at what metric is most cost effective. After choosing a correct license metric it is important to know exactly what you need to count to determine the number of licenses you want to buy.

Written by:
Licensing Team Oracle License Store

You can read more licensing Blog’s here: http://www.oraclelicensestore.com/en/blog

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Disclaimer
The material presented is based on the author's best effort, and meant for advisory purposes. Your use of this material is at your own risk. The author denies any responsibility for any damage that could occur through errors in this material.